We grow up being told what to do and what not to do and can't wait until we're adults and can do whatever we want. When we finally get there, there are new people like bosses, cool people on TV, and the government who try to tell us what to do again.

I don't mind getting into a little trouble here and there, so I tend to push the envelope a bit. However, even if you want to stay on the right side of the law, here are a few things that you probably THINK you have to do, but don't really.

Write in tip amounts You can just put the total amount and completely ignore the top box. Do you really think they're not going to figure out how much it is? If you have super messy writing you might want to write it in to make sure they understand the amount, but if you aren't a 2nd grader, you're probably fine.

Stop at stop signs in parking lots These signs aren't actually legal signs. Have you noticed how they're often not the same size or material? That's because they're made by the property owners. They're as legally valid as me putting a crosswalk in the middle of my living room. So if it's late and no one else is in the parking lot, just drive past them. It's exhilarating.

Check out at hotels There's no real benefit to checking out at hotels. You've paid for a night and they're expecting that you'll be gone by the time you said you'd be gone. Just leave.

Letting stores check your receipts You know those stores like Best Buy or Fry's who treat you like a potential shoplifter after you leave and want to verify your receipts at the door? They have no right to do it! The worst is when there's a huge line and they expect you to wait there. Just walk past and say "no thanks" when they go to look at your receipt. They legally have to let you go. The one exception are "clubs" like Costco where you've agreed to allow this in your membership agreement.

Signing credit card receipts with your real name You're probably supposed to sign it, but do you really think you're not going to get charged if you write something else? I once drew a mountain range, a lake, and an indian in a canoe that was being eaten by a huge shark. When the cashier insisted I sign my name I just wrote "artwork by Tynan" at the bottom. The charge went through.

Give your phone numbers and address when buying things This is a pet peeve of mine. Stores (RADIOSHACK!) always ask for your info so that they can send you tons of junk. I just tell them that I don't want to give it to them, and they never refuse to sell to me.

Writing out the numbers on checks How annoying is it to write out "Four thousand three hundred fifty two dollars and XX/100"? I hate it. Instead just write "--------------4352.00-----------". The chances that someone is going to try to tamper with your check are basically nil. Especially if you're writing a check to some company.

Get oil changes every 3000 miles The ideal amount of time between changes is actually about 4000-5000 miles, but motor oil companies have pushed the 3000 mile thing to sell more oil.

Have any more to add? Put them in the comments and I'll add good ones here!

In the UK, if a cop wants to search you o your car he must have reason to believe that he will find something dodgy.
You CAN refuse the search though.you don't even have to speak to him, just walk away.
If you do this though it just gives the cop reason to believe that you are hiding something.

If you live in a crowded city, are in a crowded shopping mall or other event where many people are walking both directions, you don't have to move out of stranger's ways when the walk in your path. I have found that greeting them does one of a couple of things.

They may greet you back. (this is least common but common enough for a quick hello and many conversations have begun here.)

They may just smile

If you pass them again, they are much more likely to remember you. (I have people come up to me or start the greeting second time around.

and lastly, if they are not in a social mood, they move out of your way pleasantly, returning your courtesy.

Tell the DMV the stop signs in parking lots aren't legal. In Ohio there are 2 parts to the driving test; driving & manuverability (i.e. parallel parking). I had 100% on driving, hit a cone on the parallel parking, and missed a stop sign in the parking lot because I was upset. I was failed on the driving part too because DMV considered it a legal stop sign. My advice, don't blow though a parking lot stop sign with the police around and try to get out of the ticket by telling him/her a web site blog told you that you didn't have to stop.

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Our most popular Life Nomadic article last year was our complete packing list. Since then we've learned a lot, made a lot of changes, and managed to pack a lot more into the same tiny amount of space.

There are a few areas where slight improvement could be made, which you'll hear me talk about in the video, but overall this collection of stuff represents everything a traveler needs to travel through just about anywhere on the planet, live comfortably, and keep connected.

I've consolidated most of the stuff I pack into an Amazon store, which you can access here: Life Nomadic Store. If you use that link, or the Amazon links below, I get a commission. Other good places to buy this sort of gear are ebay and outdoor shops like REI and MEC, although neither store carries most of the gear.

CES is an amazing show. With nearly 2 million square feet of exhibit space, it's easy to feel like your little 10x10 booth will get lost in the shuffle. Which, in fact, it will.

Here's a detailed account of our experience with AppMakr doing a show at CES for the first time, along with blog-by-blow learning through videos as we went through the event. Before the show I poked around on the interwebs hoping to find a first-timer guide, but it seems that everyone assumes that anyone who's doing a booth has already done one before. The CES exhibitor guide is overwhelming to say the least, and there wasn't much information for newbies. So I was committed to capturing as much of the learning as I could to share it with others contemplating a booth for the first time.

First let me say that without our AppMakr admin Crissie and our CES sales rep Tira, we would not have been able to plan this effectively, so thank you a thousand times for your help, and Tira especially for all the first-timer questions we asked (and it's great to know fog machines are allowed as long as they're water-based, even though we didn't end up using one!). Also a huge thank-you to Sue and Michael for their tireless setup and take-down help over the course of the show. Again, it would've been utterly impossible without you.

The first thing I did when contemplating the show was to prioritize goals. Here's how I ranked them, from most important to least:

CES is an amazing show. With nearly 2 million square feet of exhibit space, it's easy to feel like your little 10x10 booth will get lost in the shuffle. Which, in fact, it will.
Here's a detailed account of our experience with AppMakr doing a show at CES for the first time, along with blog-by-blow learning through videos as we went through the event. Before the show I poked around on the interwebs hoping to find a first-timer guide, but it seems that everyone assumes that anyone who's doing a booth has already done one before. The CES exhibitor guide is overwhelming to say the least, and there wasn't much information for newbies. So I was committed to capturing as much of the learning as I could to share it with others contemplating a booth for the first time.
First let me say that without our AppMakr admin Crissie and our CES sales rep Tira, we would not have been able to plan this effectively, so thank you a thousand times for your help, and Tira especially for all the first-timer questions we asked (and it's great to know fog machines are allowed as long as they're water-based, even though we didn't end up using one!). Also a huge thank-you to Sue and Michael for their tireless setup and take-down help over the course of the show. Again, it would've been utterly impossible without you.
The first thing I did when contemplating the show was to prioritize goals. Here's how I ranked them, from most important to least:
Executive team has a chance to bond at the show
Press from announcements, and being able to say "We announced at CES"
Knowledge & thought leadership via a panel
Leads from the booth itself
Branding from the booth
You can see I ranked the actual booth as least important, because I assumed it'd be impossible for us to break through the CES clutter. Here's my scorecard on how those priorities shook out:
Executive team has a chance to bond at the show:
This was great - we all got to spend time together and reconnect in important ways. We're all running so fast that we rarely have the chance to do this. In fact, this is probably the only opportunity all year where we'll all be able to spend 3+ days together in both a work and social setting. The show was worthwhile just for this. Some of us brought spouses, who got to enjoy Las Vegas and relax -- and we all know that the support of our spouses is what enables us to work the crazy hours that we do, so that was just as important to me in the planning.
The only thing I would change is the setup schedule, which left me so exhausted (literally 9 hours of sleep over 3 days) that I wasn't able to enjoy everyone's company as much as I would've hoped to. The show started Thursday morning, and I arrived at midnight on Tuesday, meaning we only had 1 day to set up. It would've been better to arrive late Monday or early Tuesday to spread the setup over 2 days instead of one.
Press from announcements, and being able to say "We announced at CES"
AppMakr turned one year old while we were at CES, so it was a fitting venue to launch our multi-platform support for Android and Windows Phone devices in addition to iPhone. While we got some press from the announcement, we didn't break through the press clutter as well as I would've liked. So I'd say we underperformed in this area, although an unexpected upshot from the announcement was literally thousands of beta requests we got from the announcement, which are still now pouring in, and one of our resellers even launched a very cool app for the show. Launching a new product or feature at CES does lend credibility, though, and we'll be able to say "we announced this at CES" in the future.
Knowledge & thought leadership via a panel
Our CTO Isaac Mosquera did a phenomenal panel on the state of apps at CES, which we captured, so this was a total win.
Leads from the booth itself
We got an unexpected bonus here. Tira, our CES rep, situated us in the iLounge pavilion, which turned out to be mostly hardware case manufacturers. In fact, we were the only software / services company I saw in the iLounge. CES has traditionally been a hardware show, and we knew we were taking a risk by being there, but attendees seemed to find it very refreshing to stumble upon something different at our booth. Several times attendees said AppMakr was "the most impressive thing they'd seen at the show." Considering we were 100 sq feet out of 2 million, we took that as a pretty good sign that being there was the right thing to have done, and the interest we got from people validated that. In addition to AppMakr, which is currently free, we offer an AppMakr concierge service, where resellers build apps for clients with small budgets (under $20k) as well as an enterprise professional services brand, PointAbout, which handles Fortune 1000 clients. We got a good lead flow off the entire spectrum of mobile solutions we offer. Total unexpected win here.
Branding from the booth
It's hard to tell how effective our branding was, although the AppMakr booth looked great thanks to our lead designer, Jeff. We did have a number of people come up to us and tell us that they've already used AppMakr to make apps, which was great. This one is hard to quantify, which is why it was at the bottom of the priority list in the first place.
Key learnings from the event
In the videos below I go into detail as we figured things out. Here are some of the main things I would highlight -- watch the videos for more detail.
Give yourself 2 days to set up, or hire a professional crew to do it if you have the budget -- it's exhausting (and I'm used to long hours!)
Have a staging area pre-show. We had two friends, Chris & Peter, who very graciously agreed to accept packages before-hand for us. If they hadn't done that, we wouldn't have been able to ship things to Vegas up to a week ahead of time. Most hotels charge by the pound to accept items and even then only within a limited timeframe
Plan meticulously. We did pretty well here. We all had schedules of when we were going to be on booth duty, which was key. I had pre-shipped most of what we needed. I had backups for the backups for key parts of the interactive photo booth that we had.
CES membership costs $700 per year. It gives you a special "members only" reserved parking area. It's almost worth the $700 just for the parking. Otherwise, parking would've been impossible. And speaking of parking...
... If you have lots of stuff you'll be schlepping around, get a minivan. We did, as a last minute low-cost upgrade, and we wouldn't have been able to do the show without it.
Sunday wasn't as slow as I expected it to be: The show starts on Thursday, and I thought by Sunday most people would be gone, but the traffic was surprisingly steady on Sunday. It's worth sticking around for
The on-site facilities contractors are impossible to deal with: The on-site facilities coordinators, a company called GES, was a complete mess. In fairness, they're responsible for setting up 2 million square feet of space, and I'm sure they didn't care about our small 10x10 booth, but the only thing consistent about them was how they messed up almost every part of our booth. When we arrived, we had the wrong setup, and the coordinator demanded proof that it was, in fact, incorrect. I had to stop what I was doing to open my laptop and show her what we'd ordered. Then, when we asked it to be fixed, it wasn't by 3am the next morning when we'd finished setting up, so we made due with what we'd been given. The next day, however, we found an notice from GES saying we'd have to pay to fix their own mistake. I then asked GES not to change anything, as we'd made the current setup work, and they proceeded to swap it out anyway. To make things worse, the next day I found an invoice charging us over $200 for the work I'd asked them not to do, which was to fix their mistake in the first place. Basically, they failed at every chance they got. It was a very stressful and disappointing experience, and it was probably the biggest factor that would keep me from doing a booth in the future. I have the entire correspondence chain in writing if you find it hard to believe.
Here's a lot more detail, hope the videos are helpful and please feel free to ask questions in the comments below, which I'll answer.
CES How-To Video #1 - Unloading Peter's truck with all the pre-ship items he held for us:
CES How-To Video #2 - The minivan and CEA membership:
CES How-To Videos #3 - #8 (coming)
CES How-To Video #9 - Sneak peek before the show:
CES How-To Video #10 - #11 (coming)
CES How-To Video #12 - Parking:
CES How-To Video #13 - The Switch-A-Roo Fiasco:
CES How-To Video #14 - The Interactive Photo Booth:
CES How-To Video #15 - The Kodak Zi8:
CES How-To Video #16 - Re-booking flights:
CES How-To Video #17 - The breakdown + in-booth wifi pro-tip:
CES How-To Video #18 - On the plane home (finally):